


rivers and remembrance

by gaytimetraveller



Category: Persona 2
Genre: F/F, OH YES LADS we're doing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 04:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10868841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaytimetraveller/pseuds/gaytimetraveller
Summary: Noriko remembers everything maybe a little too much, something about the past made her want to live there; things weren't like they've been, they never would be, neither of them would be the same as they had been. Something about that was both infinitely comforting and unthinkingly horrifying to Noriko.





	rivers and remembrance

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this like weeks ago and it was written in a book and i never typed it bc i can barely read my own writing anyways heres gay

Noriko often dreams of the past. She dreams of the wind in her hair, steady feet on dirt ground, letting herself tumble into grass by the side of the river, Anna already there; she’d gotten ahead, she was always ahead. Stronger legs, steadier feet, she never tripped nor stumbled like Noriko did. She never hesitated, always first, head first and already off and running. She was like a ocean-bound river, fierce and fast, never letting up. Or, at least she had been.

Anna wasn’t like that anymore. _They_ weren’t like that anymore.

Noriko couldn’t exactly say it was bad. Anna was doing better than she had been at first, and anyways, Anna was Anna even if she had changed. Her accident had reminded Noriko of water drying up, water evaporating up into storm clouds, only made worse by wind; a wild, angry, wind. It felt like a scream of desperation. Noriko wasn’t sure of why she thought of things like that, but it felt right.

Anna wasn’t so much a storm cloud anymore, no more darkly rumbling thunder and lightning, but she most definitely had been. Dark and brooding, isolated, avoided. Noriko hadn’t quite figured out what Anna was now. Maybe she was in-between. Maybe she was recovering. Maybe she would be like, a river? A calmer river? Or a pond? A small raincloud? Noriko only had so many water related comparisons.

Things were okay now, they just weren’t what they had been. Noriko didn’t know how to feel about that. She didn’t want to ask Anna how she felt about that. She would say that she didn’t, as in she didn’t feel about it in general. Noriko knew she was just deflecting, she tended to do that recently. She didn’t want to know Anna’s real answer, it made her nervous. She didn’t want to push either, Anna could be surprisingly fragile in some ways, Noriko certainly didn’t want to hurt her, to fracture her any further. Anna was brittle these days (just like the bones she had broken. That thought wasn’t one Noriko liked to be reminded of.)

She still remembered the first time they’d gone jogging together. Jogging had turned into friendly competition, into just a flat out race. Anna had won. Of course she’d won, she was the track star, Noriko was the learner.

Noriko had finally caught up to her, down by the river, breathing heavy and face red. Anna was down right by the side of the river, sneakers thrown off into the grass, legs in the water just up to her knees. She waved the other over, smiling freely (Noriko missed that). She’d felt the butterflies in her stomach, but back then she wasn’t sure why. For a while she’d convinced herself that it was nerves, that it was out of respect. She spent quite a while pretending it didn’t have anything to do with how nice Anna looked when she smiled like that.

Then there’d been the first time Anna had grabbed Noriko’s hand with a devilish smile, cutting off conversation of going out for burgers. She’d leaned in, and Noriko hadn’t been sure if it’d been how warm Anna’s hand was or just the idea of Anna taking her by the hand that made her light up red. Anna leaned in closer and whispered for her to run as fast as her legs could carry her, a grin and a promise in her voice.

They’d dashed the whole way to Peace Diner, hands outstretched and loosely held between them. Noriko had smiled so wide her cheeks had started to hurt. She wondered if (hoped) Anna had felt the same.

Despite everything that had happened Anna still clearly remembered that day. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that memory. It was a strange emotion, the one that came with remembering feeling so alive. It made her ache in a strange way nothing else did.

There were other “ _alive_ ” memories too, ones that made Anna feel lots of things she didn’t want to think too hard about. She wasn’t sure how comfortable she was with that. Sometimes those happy memories made her smile, or sigh, or want to screech until her voice went hoarse, run until her legs gave out (which wasn’t far anymore). And sometimes they made her want to do nothing more than lie down and try not to cry over what could’ve been.

It all made Anna uncomfortable.

Feeling too much often made Anna, uncomfortable. When she let her emotions go too far it shook her to her core. When she came down from those emotional highs she couldn’t begin to comprehend how she had felt so strongly or why, and why she had said and thought and done the things she had. Hence, Anna distanced herself from her emotions; cut them off quickly, held back everything behind a dam, even when it hurt. Emotions hurt, and Anna didn’t often understand how or why, and she didn’t especially want to experience more of them to find out.

Anna still didn’t know what she thought about the past, about those oh-so-alive moments. It made her heart rattle in her chest. She felt twisted in knots. It was uncomfortable.

But at the same time those memories made her feel warm, even if it was in an achy way, one that hurt if she let it go too far. So, she remembered.

She remembered running up to Noriko and grabbing her had, specifically the first time she’d done that. She remembered the first time she’d put her cold hands on Noriko’s face, and that way her face had scrunched up at the freezing touch (it’d been cute).

She remembered grabbing Noriko’s hand again, and then bringing her up to that abandoned clocktower room; the first time they’d truly had any time alone. She remembered her warm hands on Noriko’s even warmer face, and she’d leaned in to—

Noriko remembered being pulled into the clocktower. She remembered Anna’s just slightly rough and calloused hands on her face, and her hands hesitantly hovering for a moment above Anna’s forearms before she’d decided that _yes_ , that was okay. She remembered her face feeling so warm she felt like she might catch on fire and burn up. She remembered the feeling of Anna’s soft spiked hair tickling against her skin, and Anna quickly kissing her, as if she was the shy one. Noriko remembered feeling as if she never wanted to leave that moment, that space. That whole memory made her feel awfully pink. She didn’t know quite what the definition of pink as a feeling was, but she had it.

She couldn’t forget the first time Anna had hugged her. It’d been around the corner of a dead end hallway (out of sight, out of mind). Noriko remembered an awful lot of things, an awful lot of firsts. Some of them she wished she could do for a first time all over again. She wondered if Anna felt the same (she hoped to find out, when Anna sorted out her raging river of emotion and confusion, she knew she would someday, because if there was one thing Noriko believed in it was Anna.)

Noriko watched the rain fall outside, and Anna deeply asleep with one arm around her waist. She watched the rain pour down and wondered if that was how Anna felt (when she felt). Anna would tell her someday, she hoped. She always tried her best to tell Noriko the truth, and Noriko believed in her to do it. Noriko believed in Anna with everything she could, and she hadn’t truly let her down yet.


End file.
